Tsukiji! Last day in Tokyo!

Had been wanting to go to Tokyo's famed Tsukiji Fish market but haven't been able to wake up early enough before work to visit there. As luck has it, I had the morning of my last day in Tokyo free from work as the flight was in the afternoon, and determined to see Tsukiji before I fly back to Singapore, I had packed my luggage the night before and made my way there in the morning.

First weekday taking the Tokyo metro, and yes, the train was packed with office workers and students going off to school. Tokyo is really packed with people and wherever I go the streets always seems to be filled people especially during peak hours.

Tsukiji Station was just a few stops from my hotel and it was a short train ride and a fair bit of walking before I reached the fish market, and boy, was it huge! Tsukiji Market is a giant complex with endless rows of stalls selling all sorts of seafood produce and fresh seafood!

Almost all of Tokyo's seafood comes from this market where tons and tons of fresh produce from the seas are shipped here from all over the world every morning. And in Japan, where it is almost impossible for any Japanese to go without having fresh seafood everyday, you can tell how enormous the scale of the seafood industry is! It is likely that all the seafood that I had in my week in Tokyo had come from here.



The variety of seafood that can be found here is simply amazing too: sea urchins, giant octopus, squid, tuna, eels, clams, oysters, puffer fish, you name it, everything you are sure to be able to find it here, from the staples to the exotic! Surprising, there wasn't much of a stink that you would expect of a wet market but I guess thats because things move out of here so fast that it doesn't leave time for it to start rotting!



I had a field day snapping photos and just watching the hustle and bustle of the market. Its amazing how there can still be order in so much of the chaos going on: loading and unloading of fishes from the trucks, the moving of goods from one stall to another in motorized mini-trucks, slicing and cutting fish into marketable sizes, bargaining between buyers and sellers, the bookkeepers tallying the day's takings etc.



With that, it concludes my final destination in Tokyo before I returned back to Singapore, with fond memories of the unique cultural experience I had.